Through Ricochet, which began Sept. 21, subscribers can connect to the Internet with portable modems that send and receive signals through the devices instead of through telephone or cable lines.
Even just a few years ago, reporters needed to carry a BGAN, a portable satellite modem the size of a hardcover novel.
On the consumer front, Huawei's latest gadget is the "MiFi" – a portable wireless modem the size of a deck of cards that creates a local area network for a half-dozen laptop computers.
Palm and Pocket PC handheld users can also do that with portable standard modems and ordinary phone connections to their I.S.P.'s.
Samsung dongles will be handed out to plug into tablets and laptop computers, as will portable miniature modems that can create small WI-FI hotspots linking into O2's 4G infrastructure or "backhaul".
The modem is portable, so users can connect from anywhere within a region, but not yet mobile, so users cannot connect from a moving bus.
He started by emptying his overstuffed briefcase: a portable computer (with a fax modem), a backup battery, a battery charger, cellular telephone, a backup battery for the phone, another battery charger, some wires for connecting the modem to a telephone outlet, an external floppy disk drive, a digital pager, an AC power adapter, some power cords and the usual paper notebooks.
The inherent limitation of the medium -- that it isn't very portable, that you need a modem and phone line to get at it -- is fast giving way to wireless and hand-held technology that can put online listings at your fingertips, wherever you happen to be.
As a manager, I could use part of my budget to provide engineers with a second phone line at home and a portable computer with a built-in modem -- not all that whiz-bang compared with what Doug had just shown me or with what we have today, but I didn't think we needed whiz-bang technology to solve this urgent problem.
